Omar could hardly speak, the threat and the racial slur together were too much.

‘In fact,’ said the voice, ‘in fact, can your mammy drive?’

‘Uh, aye.’

‘Send her with the bag. Send her alone.’

Omar managed three words. ‘In an hour.’

‘In one hour.’

He was holding the receiver so tight to his ear that the hang-up click hurt his ear drum. Slowly, with shallow breath, Omar took the receiver away, raised it above his head and clubbed Billal as hard as he could on the back of the head.

Harris looked up at the Anwars’ house. The low garden wall was still staved in but all the evidence cards and tape were gone from the garden and the bungalow looked as unremarkable as any of its neighbours.

‘Wouldn’t look twice,’ he said. ‘Much do you think he’s got stashed away?’

‘Companies House has a trail of failed companies going back eighteen months. VAT can pull in millions a month. Must have storage somewhere.’

‘And he’s living in one bedroom with his new missus?’

‘He’ll be spending a fortune on Lady and Master Nutkins though.’

‘Much do ye reckon? Thousands a month?’

Morrow shrugged. ‘He’s still got boxes and boxes of cash somewhere.’ She could see someone moving through the mottled glass on the Anwars’ front door, a mad lurch from one side of the hall to the other. She was imagining scenarios that would make sense of it: a leap for a phone, a jumping game among family members, someone falling forwards to catch a falling vase, when a giant body crashed into the glass pane, making it shudder outwards.

Harris and Morrow were out of the car and up the path, just as the body got up and fell away from the door. Harris tried the door, shouted, ‘Police! Police! Let us in!’

The door was flung open by Sadiqa. She gestured down the hall like a frightened magician’s assistant.

Omar was sitting on his brother’s chest, trying to club him with the weighted base of the phone. Billal was bloodied, held both arms over his face and cycled, kneeing his wee brother in the back with each of his knees alternately. Omar’s face didn’t register the blows to his kidneys. Omar didn’t even hear Harris coming across the hall towards him. Intent on what he was doing he brought the weighted receiver of the phone down and up, down and up on his brother, an angry child breaking a toy he had come to hate.

Harris grabbed the phone from his hand, put a throttle hold on Omar, yanking him off his brother, pulling him to his feet.

Suddenly free, Billal looked up, his nose was a bloody mess but he saw Morrow looking at him and waited a beat pause before he started shouting, ‘Oh god, my god!’ He rolled away from her, his eyes still trained on her, willing her to come and look to make sure he was OK. That’s what made her look away.

Dead-eyed with shock, Meeshra was in the bedroom doorway, her hands out, holding either side of the door jamb. Morrow took a step towards her and was surprised to see her jump a little. ‘Meeshra?’ Behind her the baby gave a squeak but Meeshra’s eye didn’t waver. She wasn’t blocking the doorway to protect the baby. Meeshra was protecting something else.

Keeping eye contact, Morrow walked towards her, took the woman’s right hand from the frame and saw the horror on her face as she realised she’d given them away. Morrow walked over to the only piece of furniture in the room large enough. She allowed herself a lick of the lips, bent down and took the edge of the divan bed in both hands. The mattress slid to the ground on the far side and the wooden frame lifted easily. She held it over her head and looked down.

Shrink-wrapped blocks of pink and purple bank notes, solid as bricks, so many she had to estimate in feet: five feet by four feet, one yard high.

Aware of the hush in the hall she looked out. Beyond Meeshra, Sadiqa, Harris and Omar saw the money and stopped, stunned, until Sadiqa fell forward from the waist, picked up the telephone from the floor and, with remarkable grace for a woman of her size, smashed her eldest son in the bollocks with it.

Here was the nurse, back to ask him if he wanted to go down to the cafeteria for a cup of tea; she could change his auntie and have her nice and ready for the doctors’ round. He could come back then and speak to them.

Pat sat up, looking at Minnie’s hand, finding her middle knuckle white from the pressure of his forehead. Carefully, he placed the hand back on top of the covers and sat up. His back was aching. His face was wet, his eyes puffed from crying and being bent over double for so long. He suddenly felt very foolish.

‘Aye, I mibbi will now,’ Pat stood up slowly, hiding his face from the nurse. She handed him a clutch of tissues. He dried his face.

‘Just you take your time,’ she said softly, and left again.

Pat went out into the corridor and locked himself in the toilet. He turned on the tap and leaned over the basin, cupping cold water in his hands and throwing it at his face. He tried to look at himself in the mirror, to check that he looked OK, but he couldn’t find the courage to do it. He dabbed his face dry with rough green paper and left.

A different nurse watched him walking down the corridor towards her, an older woman, navy uniform and trousers. Seeing his red eyes she smiled, head tilted in sympathy. ‘Mr Welbeck?’

Pat tried to skirt past her. ‘Just going for a cup of tea,’ he mumbled.

‘Well, the doctors won’t be down to see your auntie for at least half an hour, so just you take your time, there’s no hurry.’

He tried to get past but she stepped towards him and touched his elbow, dipping at the knees to get him to look up at her. He stopped, caught her eye, found he hadn’t the strength to resist.

‘She has been very comfortable,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t worry about that.’

He nodded, dragged a breath into his chest to quell more tears and, in doing so, tipped his head back.

She was a small woman. Beyond her, over her shoulder, was a wire mesh window into a room, the glass marked with the yellowed flaking residue of old sellotape. Yellow curtains with pink triangles on them. And there she was, sitting up in bed, an oil slick of hair pulled over one shoulder, hands on the bed sheets in front of her, the light behind her. She was looking at him.

‘… Although she does have some bedsores, they are very clean and the saline baths seem to be helping.’

Pat could not rip his gaze from Aleesha, nor she from him. He thought he saw her eyes widen, as if in recognition, but then wondered if maybe it was his own eyes that had opened wider, as if he was trying to take in more of her.

The woman in front of him talked on about bedsores, about the home Minnie had come from, about a report and a test for something but he couldn’t hear her properly, just disjointed words swimming towards him, over him, by his ears.

Without breaking eye contact, without seeming even to move her head, Aleesha threw the covers back, swung her feet in perfect point to the floor and stood up. One of her hands was bandaged, white padded. She kept it high and held his eye as she walked to him. Even at the door frame, even when they couldn’t see each other for the woodchip wall, they held one another’s gaze. She lingered at the door, waiting for the nurse to go.

‘Sorry,’ the nurse touched her chest, ‘I’m Staff Nurse Sarah, what’s your name?’

Aleesha stepped back so that one of her eyes was hidden behind the door frame, she seemed to be unsure that coming to talk to the stranger was a good idea, bottled it a bit and looked at her bandaged hand, back curved as if she was going to step back into the room, as if a force in there was sucking her backwards.